


wear the body

by kashxy



Series: will i ever stop writing angst? (no) [3]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming
Genre: Irondad, Past Rape, Product of rape, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Harm, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kashxy/pseuds/kashxy
Summary: He looks in the mirror, and shatters it with his fist. He holds the face of a rapist.





	wear the body

When Peter was six, he’d asked who his father was until his voice ran hoarse. He had asked over, and over, and over again, stopping only when his mother shouted and cried for him to stop. He’d left the room, embarrassed, and stayed at Aunt May’s and Uncle Ben’s for three days. 

When Peter was eight, he’d learnt not to ask who his father was. He prided himself in the skill of being so curious yet so strong in not prompting his mother to speak about his unnamed father. There were no pictures, no records to go off. His birth certificate held no fatherly figure: it was as if his father had never even existed. It was as if Peter was a ghost child. 

When Peter was eleven, he’d grown used to being taunted. _Fatherless_ , they’d yelled. _Orphan_! He’d never told his mother, ignoring how much it bothered him, and distracted himself with math problems and hid his tears under an Iron Man mask. When the storm came on one particularly bad night, Flash’s mocking tone telling him he was a ghost, Peter had stuffed his mouth with a sock under his mask and bit down until his teeth hurt. His mind felt giddy, just waiting for his father to run into his room and scoop him up in his arms and hold him until he stopped shaking. The storm came, but his father didn’t. 

When Peter was thirteen, he’d realised why his mother had never wanted him to know his father. Of course, the only logical solution was that he was a famous millionaire,  living on a small island somewhere in the canary islands with a private jet and a social media bursting with followers. His mother and him kept in touch, promising that he’d be back for Peter’s sixteenth birthday; Peter had been giddy as he imagined his father walking through the front door, a birthday cake in his hand, his mother smiling softly from the sofa. They’d have a group hug, and Peter would relish in his fathers particular smell, all lemons and no whiskey. 

When Peter was fourteen, the fantasy had morphed into his real life. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop himself from yearning around Mr. Stark, silently begging him to come home and meet his mother. He’d almost convinced his inner child that this was his father, though he often went home, sobbing. Mr. Stark wasn’t his father. Peter wasn’t a child. His father would _never_ come back. 

When Peter was sixteen, he’d realised why his mother had never wanted him to know his father, and he had _broken_. 

“He was supposed to be here!” Peter screams, his mind haywire as he stares at his mother, who’s trembling in front of him. Peter’s at least two inches shorter than his mother, but his words hurt like a hot knife into flesh. He can’t stop the anger that seeps into his words.  

“Pete, please,” Mary says, her voice shaky as she cries. “Please, just listen-” 

“No! I’ve spent my whole life not knowing who my father is! I convinced myself he was coming, so _where is he_?” 

His voice wavers off at the end, but his eyes shed angry tears, hot and streaming like a waterfall. His mother is gently clasping a small locket, and she’s never looked smaller as she stands in front of Peter, her eyes swollen and rimmed red. 

“Pete, look, I know, I know, but please, just listen-”

“I have spent my whole life listening to your lies!” He spits, and his mother physically recoils. “You have _lied_ to me my entire life! I have _no idea_ who my father is, do you understand? I barely exist!” 

He’s yelling now, and he can’t seem to stop the angry shake in his clenched fists as more tears stream down his cheeks. He can’t tell whether he’s more furious, or destroyed. 

“I can’t keep living like a ghost! I need to know who my father is! I-”

“Your father is a rapist!” His mother screams, and this time it’s Peter’s turn to recoil. Mary has barely ever raised her voice to him, and the fury in her eyes sends a spike of fear down his spine. 

“His name is Richard. He’s a rapist.” 

She sinks down to the sofa, clutching the locket so hard it may shatter. She’s still crying, but Peter can barely hear her sobs through the ringing in his ears. 

“He’s - what?” 

The room spins around him, bile rising his throat. His stomach is churning sickeningly, his bodily reactions too quick for his mind to keep up. He's still stuck in the past, in the mind set of not knowing who his father is. Not where he is right now, watching his mother's body wrack with violent sobs, with the knowledge that his father is a rapist.

"Is he-" Peter chokes off and wavers on his feet. "In prison?"

Mary shakes her head and threads her fingers into her hair. Peter had been giving her hassle all week in the run up to his birthday, and her nails are bitten down to the core. Angry red and almost bleeding, she digs them into her scalp and bites back the sob that rumbles through her chest. The pain rolls over her in waves and Peter's sure his heart breaks then and there.

"Do I...look like him?"

His mother freezes, and clenches down on her scalp. An uncomfortable silence falls over them before Peter gasps and lets the tears race down his cheeks.

He's running up the stairs and locking the door before his mind can catch up, letting the sobs take him over violently. He can vaguely hear his mother sobbing downstairs, her weak voice softly calling out to him. It makes him cry harder, and he slams his head against the door to try and get the sound of her cries out of his head. He should be there, helping her, comforting her - instead, he's alone, in the knowledge that he's a product of rape.

He freezes. A product of rape.

All of a sudden, the sobs wrecking his body are harder, the spit dribbling down his chin and onto the material of the old shirt he’d cried into so many times before. 

The blood in his veins runs different now that he knows he shares it with a rapist. He tingles when he realises he shares DNA with a rapist. The skin on his face crawls and begs for him to claw it off when he realises he’s touched so many people before with the skin of a rapist. He throws up when he realises he shares a _face_ with a rapist. 

He doesn’t stop vomiting until all that’s left slipping from his lips is bile. He trembles, eyes wide and burning through tears as the vomit seeps through his lap and fills his nostrils. He continues to gag, but there’s nothing left of him to leave. Of course there isn’t - he’s bound to a rapist, for the rest of his life. 

He catches sight of himself in the mirror across the room, and takes a moment to let his eyes freeze on his reflection. His lips are slightly dripping in vomit and spit, tears making permanent stains down his cheeks, and his eyes are so swollen he can barely recognise himself, but he never expected to anyway.

His skin, once a tan colour that Mary used to gush over, is sickly and pale when he trails his eyes over himself. He wants to cut the skin off of his flesh and leave his bones exposed to the air, letting its filth clean all the DNA from him that he shares with his mothers rapist. 

He looks like his mother’s rapist. 

In less than a second, Peter is on his feet and running to the mirror with a barely concealed scream. He punches his fist straight through the glass and lets the tears of pain and anguish flow freely, blurring his vision of shattered glass and dirty blood. 

Peter let’s out a sigh of relief, quickly followed by a cry of pain as the sensation of broken glass in his wound sets in. He knows his healing will work quickly and that he has to pull the shards out, but he can’t bring himself to stop the blood gushing out of his hand. Finally, this dirty DNA he’s been carrying for sixteen years is leaving his body, cleaning his insides out and changing him from the inside. 

His face feels wrong, like he wants to take a blade and slice it off and ask for a new one. It crawls around the flesh, pulling away from his curly hair and detaching itself from the bones underneath. Peter stares at the glass as he slowly slides to the floor against the wall, listening to his mother cry from outside his room, begging to let her in. 

It’s his sixteenth birthday, and he’s sat in a dark room, tears ran dry in his eyes, hands bleeding out in front of him. He feels almost floaty, the words repeating themselves over and over again in his mind. It’s driving him crazy, and it’s the only thing he can think of when he gently rocks himself back and forth, desperate to clutch onto the last bit of innocence he’d felt before he knew who his father was. With a final thought, he lets out a sob and clutches his hair in his shaking hands, pulling hard while hissing through his teeth. The words spin around his head, driving him to yell out in pain. The agony is _something else_ , something so unearthly non-physical that he can’t seem to keep up. He takes in a shuddering breath and drags his hands down his face, digging his nails in, in an attempt to bring himself back to life. It doesn’t help; the words never stop. 

He looked like a rapist. 


End file.
